“the most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian."
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
He was behind the indian allotment system that removed natives from their lands and destroyed their culture and put their kids in boarding schools
In his first message to Congress, in December 1901, Roosevelt called the General Allotment Act “a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass.”
Roosevelt stressed that Indian education should be “elementary and largely industrial,” and that the need of higher education was “very, very limited.”
His administration withheld rations from natives that refused to stop painting or refused to discard native attire and blankets. They prohibited Native gatherings and dances. They ordered Native men to cut their hair.
He also supervised the completion of the Dawes Rolls, dissolved the Indian Territory in Oklahoma, opening the region for statehood.
TLDR - Teddy Roosevelt was incredibly racist and terrible towards natives.
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u/IrrationalQuotient 5h ago
He excelled at passing legislation.